Red Souls
by RedRosa1
Summary: Lisbon reflects on her team's daemons. Oneshot, may turn it into a twoshot with Jane's POV if interest is high enough.


**AN- Right so I've been reading a lot of daemon fics lately, and watching a lot of the mentalist, but for some reason I couldn't find any mentalist fic with daemons in, so I wrote one. Because lets be honest we all want to know what daemon Jane would have. I actually have two ideas but this ones shorter so i wrote it first, just to see if there's any interest. (If anyone wants a fic where Jane has a witches daemon thats the next one.)**

**I own nothing**

**Red souls**

Dogs are common daemons in law enforcement, so much so that it's a cliche. Dogs mean adherence to the law, obedience, respect for command. Lisbon finds it privately hilarious that Jane is the only member of her team with a true dog daemon. She supposes technically her Kato comes under the broad heading of canine daemons, but people make different assumptions when you have a wolf standing guard beside you. If Jane and Aramanta have taught her nothing else it's that daemons don't always mean what you think they mean. In a way it makes sense that Jane's daemon would be as good at playing on other peoples false assumptions as Jane himself.

Sometimes she wonders if her team was made for Jane, because while by God he is a bad influence, there is a certain level of deceptiveness in all of their daemons. In some ways Van Pelt's daemon is even more misleading than Jane's. People look at Farlan, and see a pretty little bird with a red chest. They think of Grace as pretty, bright, but lacking in substance. They assume she's the weak link. They're wrong. Robins are vicious little bastards, and time and time again Van Pelt has shown a brutal streak that puts Lisbon with her wolf daemon to shame. Not many people could handle shooting their fiancé dead.

She wonders about Rigsby's Alessia, some children's daemons settle the way they do to protect them, because no one else will. Hers certainly did, and looking at the classic protective form of the mother grizzly, she wonders who Rigsby had needed protection from. Day to day Alessia looks for all the world like a giant cuddly teddy bear, but Lisbon has seen her bare her teeth when Rigsby or someone he cares about is threatened, and in some ways she's even more frightening than Cho's daemon.

People are always thrown off balance by Kyta, Komodo Dragon daemons are rare enough that there are no comforting assumptions to fall back on about what she says about Cho. Besides which there is something fundamentally unnerving about having an 8 foot lizard with vicious claws and teeth staring at you. It's part of what makes Cho such a good interrogator, he can make suspects feel nervous and uncomfortable, just by walking into the room. Kyta is even more threatening upon further research, which reveals that she is most likely venomous, as well as storing a number of virulent strains of dangerous bacteria in her saliva. Kyta is perfect for Cho, unreadable, deadly, and highly intelligent.

Aramanta is perfect for Jane too, although most people can't see it. She's a big, white, slightly fluffy dog with a massive grin, so the first time they met she couldn't understand what about the other daemon put Kato so on edge. Still she had learned to trust Kato's instincts and so she stayed wary of Jane. Her boss looked at Jane's daemon and his deductive skills and saw someone who belonged in law enforcement, offering him a job as a consultant and unwittingly unleashing a force for chaos on his department. Lisbon saw something very different, so that night she did some research to find out exactly what sort of dog Ara was. Everything fell into place once she found out. Kato was unsettled by her because she was a livestock guardian dog, designed to kill wolves and bears that threaten her flocks. Kuvasz are bred to be cunning and aware, to think and act independently, with a fierce protective streak and sense of loyalty. Ara was a perfect match for Jane, right down to the clownish sense of humour and the mistrust of strangers.

People made a lot of false assumptions about her Kato. Wolf daemons are supposed to be for vicious, predatory people. Wild people, who respect violence more than the law. She knows better, wolves are first and foremost about family, about protecting and supporting each other, about surviving together. When Kato settled her family was her brothers, and she, the alpha had to protect them from their father. Now her family is her team and they all protect each other, and the wolf in her will have the blood of any that threaten that, law or no law. Not that she's going to encourage Jane by telling him that.


End file.
